Fiction Podcast: Louise Erdrich Reads Joyce Carol Oates

On this month’s fiction podcast, Louise Erdrich reads “Mastiff,” by Joyce Carol Oates, which appeared in the magazine earlier this year. (Erdrich’s latest book, “The Round House,” won the National Book Award in 2012.)

In “Mastiff,” a couple go on a hike together early in their relationship. She is forty-one; he is somewhat older. They both, Erdrich observes, are “set up as extremely lonely people, desperate to find the other person attractive, and to fall in love somehow.” The man and the woman (as they are referred to throughout the story) observe each other closely, each testing the other’s potential as a partner.

Oates deftly draws the nuances of their interactions, as when she describes their respective reactions to first encountering a huge dog (a dog that will later introduce a dramatic turn in the story and their relationship) on the trail:

The man, sensing the woman’s unease at the sight of the dog, made some joke, which the woman couldn’t quite hear and did not acknowledge. They were walking single file, the woman in the lead. She waited for the man to touch her shoulder, as another man might have done, to reassure her, but she knew that he would not, and he did not. Instead the man said, in a tone of slight reproof, that the dog was an English mastiff—“Beautiful dog.”

Much of what the man said to the woman, she understood, was in rebuke of her narrow judgment, her timorous ways. Sometimes the man was amused by these qualities. At other times, she saw in his face an expression of startled disapproval, veiled contempt.

The woman said, over her shoulder, with a wild little laugh, “Yes! Beautiful.”

You can hear Erdrich read “Mastiff” and discuss it with our fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, by listening above or by downloading the podcast for free from iTunes.

Illustration by Owen Freeman.

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